


Phantom Limb

by Deflare



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:47:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22215787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deflare/pseuds/Deflare
Summary: Della Duck can do just about anything. But after a minor accident in the park damages her prosthetic leg, she has to confront the fact that doing anything gets a lot easier with support from others.
Relationships: Della Duck & Dewey Duck & Huey Duck & Louie Duck
Comments: 5
Kudos: 57





	Phantom Limb

**Author's Note:**

> Content Warnings: Oblique discussion of amputated limb and the remaining stump; discussion of weight loss/weight gain

Phantom Limb 

Della Duck took a deep breath of the summer afternoon air and smiled to herself as she took another lick of her ice cream (neopolitan swirl, her favorite, and some philosophical part of her mind wanted to draw comparisons between the three flavors and her three sons). Behind her, the boys were chatting-slash-arguing, as was their wont. The constant bickering might worry another parent, but she’d grown up with Donald Duck, and thus knew better than most how surprisingly healthy it could be to argue with a cantankerous sibling. Seven fleshy duck feet slapped faintly on the pavement as the quartet walked, punctuated by the light metallic ‘tink’ of Della’s prosthetic foot.

It was nice to just have a normal day with her kids, taking a walk through the park while eating ice cream. ...Sure, she and the boys had gotten in a small fight with one of the more obscure Beagle Boy trios an hour before, but really, who didn’t haves stories like that in Duckburg? All part of a normal day for the Duck family. What remained of Della’s left leg was getting a bit sore, between the exertion from the fight and the subsequent walk, but it was fine. Nothing she couldn’t deal with.

“Hey, Mom,” Huey called as he and Dewey came up alongside her, “can you settle an argument for us?”

“Sure, boys, what’re you arguing about? Swordfighting strategies? The proper route to the phantom island of Antillia? Uncle Scrooge’s most embarrassing Scottishisms?”

Dewey opened his mouth to speak, then paused for a second. “Okay, let’s put a pin in that last one, I want to get around to it. But right now, we were arguing about Huey’s dumb online game—“

“Hey, Mom plays it too!”

“—Okay, Huey and yours’ dumb online game, which he’s making me play against my will.”

“How is he making you play a video game against your will?” Della asked.

“Dewey lost a bet,” all three boys said simultaneously, Louie not even bothering to look up from his phone. Della made a mental note to talk to Dewey about his habit of referring to himself in the third person; it was a little worrying.

“Anyway, Huey keeps trying to convince me to stick with the Paladavian that he made for me when I started playing, but it’s really boring and I kinda want to try—“

Della never got to hear what build Dewey was more interested in. In a rapid blur of motion, she just heard, “Look out—!” when a kickball came sliding in front of her, right under her good foot. She yelped and skid, right foot rolling out from under her, and tried to catch herself on her left... which buckled with a metallic ‘crunch’, and down to the asphalt she went. A half-second later, her ice cream cone landed, splatting right down on her face.

“MOM!” The boys cried out in unison.

“Oh my gosh, lady, I’m so sorry!” A pair of gosling boys came running up, faces horrified. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay! Nothing injured but my pride,” she said, putting on a comforting smile and throwing a thumbs-up as she sat up and waved the boys off. Her butt and her stump hurt too, but there was no reason to make a fuss about that. Really, more worrying was the cold ice cream dribbling down her bill. She started rummaging through her jacket pockets. She didn’t remember taking any tissues or the like with her, but she was a mom now, so those things were supposed to just sorta spontaneously appear, right? Or did she need a purse to make that particular magic work?

“Uh, Mom?” Louie said hesitantly. “That’s not the only thing that got hurt.” He held up a weird bent pipe. Where did he get—?

Oh wait. Della took another look at the ‘pipe’, then down to her left leg—which was missing its prosthetic. The goslings gaped in horror, clearly thinking they’d somehow cut her leg off.

Ah, phooey.

***

Huey, it seemed, was better than Della at keeping a Junior Woodchuck handkerchief on hand, though odds were good this one wouldn’t survive the absolute soaking with ice cream it got. And her bill would be sticky until she got a chance to get home and wash up.

Della was sitting on a park bench, fiddling with her prosthetic, as the boys hovered around her worriedly. Off in the distance, she saw the two goslings getting a lecture from their parent. She felt bad for them, really. Accidents happen, and Della had been through far (far far far far) worse.

“The good news is I’m pretty sure I can get it fixed up when we get home. The bad news is that I have to wait till I get home.” Della sighed, running her fingers over the smooth metal. “High-grade aluminum and titanium, defeated by a kickball. Isn’t that just something.”

Huey shook his head. “I mean, yeah, but it also survived liftoff, and a solar storm, and a moon crash, and getting turned into a leg, and ten years of fighting moon monsters, and the return to Earth, and all the adventures you’ve had since then, including an alien invasion… It was bound to break eventually.”

“Yeah,” Dewey said, “when you put it that way, it’s surprising we haven’t broken more limbs. Even the ones with bones in them.”

“The Ducks are built tough,” Della said. “It’s one of our main virtues. Your uncle Donald and I would’ve probably died a few times over otherwise.”

One of the triplets hadn’t spoken much since the accident. She glanced over at Louie, who was looking at her prosthetic with a serious expression. “What’s up, bud? You look like something’s bothering you.”

Louie’s eyes up at her for a second before drifting back down. “I’m okay, but, does… does your stump hurt?”

Following his gaze, Della realized that her youngest son wasn’t looking at her prosthetic, he was looking at the stump of her left leg—which she had unconsciously started rubbing. “Oh! I mean, yeah, it’s a little sore from the fall. It’ll be fine, though.”

She moved to cover the end of the stump with her hand, but Huey touched her arm. “Actually, Mom, do you mind if I take a look?”

“Uh, sure bud, no problem.” She moved her hand, something twisting in her stomach. The kids were being weird. Why were they being weird?

“You know,” Dewey said as Huey leaned in to examine the stump, “I’m not sure you ever actually told us what happened when you lost your leg.”

“Sure I did! When I crashed, part of the engine block was pinning me down, and I couldn’t get free, so I took my Junior Woodchuck pocket knife and--”

“No, no, I remember that part,” Dewey said quickly, waving his hands. He shuddered, looking off into the distance. “I’ll never forget it...” After a second, he shook his head and refocused on her. “But what was it like to just… not have a leg? Does it ever hurt? Or itch? I think I’ve heard of missing limbs like that itching...”

“I mean, taking it off obviously hurt; that’s not one of my favorite memories.” Della winced just at the thought. Leg removal, easily one of the top three pains she’d ever experienced in her life. “It itched like the dickens for the first few years, but it doesn’t happen as much these days. It was annoying, but it was better than the gum.” Earlier that day, she’d caught a glimpse of some black licorice in the shop where she and the kids got ice cream, and the triplets had to shake her out of the horrified fugue she’d started to slip into.

Beakly had been dropping hints that Della might consider seeing a therapist for her experiences. Della was starting to think that might be a good idea.

“The stump seems really… red,” Huey said with a frown, breaking her out of her thought. “And kind of inflamed. I can see the pressure marks from where it was sitting in the socket. Have you considered replacing your prosthetic?”

“Of course not!” Della held up her prosthetic, the metal foot flopping around on its hinge with a faint ‘squeak’. “You said it yourself, this little guy’s been my companion for ten years now, through all kinds of adventures!”

“Yeah, ten years! You’ve had it since you were on the Moon! But now you’re a lot heavier--”

“Dude!” “What the heck?” “You can’t just SAY that!” Huey’s brothers interrupted, looking aghast.

“No no, he’s right,” Della said. She’d noticed it when she had gotten to her closet after returning to Earth; between a diet consisting only of disgusting gum and muscle atrophy from the Moon’s low gravity, she’d gotten a lot thinner than she used to be, and only now was she getting back up to a healthy weight.

“Plus, things are just heavier on the Earth than the Moon,” Huey said. “The point is, you have a lot more weight resting in the leg, which you cobbled together in the first place. And you don’t spend much time off of it; I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to spend some time out of the prosthetic, too. Just...” He sighed. “Just think about it, okay, Mom?”

“I...” Della sighed, looking back down at her bent prosthetic. Now that he mentioned it, the metal pipe WAS looking pretty beat up, and her stump throbbed faintly from where the socket had put pressure on it. Funny how a pain like that was so easy to ignore until it was pointed out. “I’ll think about it.” She perked up at a thought. “Hey, maybe Gyro could make me an upgrade!”

“Nope!” “Bad idea!” “That’s how you get an evil robot leg,” her sons said, overlapping each other while making sharp gestures matching their commentary.

“Okay, good point.”

“Hey, think of it this way, Mom,” Dewey said with a grin, “if you hang up that leg, it can get a place of honor in the Della Duck wing of the Dewey Duck Dew-seum of Awesome History someday.”

“Oh, I get a whole wing to myself?” Della asked, a grin of her own spreading across her bill. “I’m honored.”

“Of course! It’s important to honor those instrumental to the birth and raising of Dewey the Great. You get one, Uncle Donald gets one, Uncle Scrooge gets one...” Dewey shrugged and gestured to his brothers. “I guess these chuckleheads might warrant an exhibit or two.”

“Uh-huh,” Louie said flatly. “Remind me again which of us three made himself the richest duck in the world?”

“You almost died when you did that,” Huey pointed out.

“Yeah, what’s your point?”

“Okay, boys,” Della said, cutting off the impending argument at its head. “Let’s get back home, huh? I promise I’ll look at getting a new prosthetic made. But first, I need to get this ice cream off my bill.”

Huey and Dewey started off, Huey getting into on the fruitless task of arguing with Dewey about his planned museum—sorry, “Dew-seum”. Louie lingered by Della, though, as she socketed her prosthetic onto her stump and tentatively tested her weight on it. 

Della got one step in before the aluminum started to buckle along its bend, and she quickly sat back down on the bench. “Ah, nuts.”

“Come on, Mom,” Louie said, gently pulling off the prosthetic. “Lean on me. I’ll make sure you get home okay.”

Della looked at him in surprise, then smiled softly. “Thanks, sweetie.”

It took an awkward adjustment period, but she quickly got the hang of leaning on Louie on her left side while hopping on her right, to the point where they quickly caught up with where Huey and Dewey were waiting for them. “Maybe you should get a crutch, too, Mom,” Huey said, “so you can give your leg a rest sometimes, without using Louie as one.”

Della wanted to argue, but wiggling her stump, she did have to admit that it was starting to feel a lot etter. “...Yeah, I’ll work on that too. Hey, maybe I can work on my Long John Silverbird impression. Yarr, me hearties, shiver me timbers an’ swab the decks!” She picked up her prosthetic from Louie and brandished it like a sword.

“Didn’t that guy have a peg leg?” Louie asked. “Oh man, Mom, you should think of getting a peg leg!”

“I like where your head’s at, Rebel. But in the book, Silverbird just used a crutch.”

“I definitely know I’ve told you this,” Huey commented. “Weren’t you supposed to read that book for school?”

“Hey, speaking of pirates,” Dewey said quickly as Louie started whistling innocently, “I’ve been meaning to ask. I saw a painting of you, Scrooge, and Donald fighting Captain Peghook. What’s the story about that, anyway?”

“Oh, that! That was a fun adventure. It all started when Scrooge got a tip about Peghook’s lost treasure...”

***

Della sighed as she flopped down on her back in her bed, looking up at the ceiling. The triplets had to cycle out which one supported her, but they’d gotten to the mansion without trouble. Only on arrival had Beakly pointed out that they could’ve ordered a car, which caused all four Ducks to facepalm. Louie had said something about getting an ‘Uber’; Della didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded like something that would’ve helped with the trip.

Her prosthetic sat on Della’s desk, waiting for her to repair it, and Beakly had sent up a crutch when she asked. Della wouldn’t need to use her sons to get around again anytime soon, hopefully.

That reminded Della of something else Beakly had given her, though, way back when she’d first gotten home from the Moon. Rolling over, Della rummaged through the junk in her nightstand, until she found what she was looking for and rolled back again to read it.

The paper had a short list of names and phone numbers. One was for a highly-recommended therapist with experience working with people who’d been isolated for long periods of time. One was for a support group for people who’d suffered traumatic amputation. And one was for a prosthetics technician who specialized in devices for people with active lifestyles.

Della looked over at her busted prosthetic on the desk. It had served her well, surviving some of the greatest (and most horrifying) adventures in her life. It had helped her get home to her boys.

Maybe… maybe it was time for her old friend to rest.


End file.
